The Ascendency

Faction of some people who have splintered off from the Hyperion Federation.
This faction has a different ideology than the HF - specifically, they have all 'abandoned' their biological forms, uploading themselves into Sentient Robots. It is of the opinion of these people that the entire HF should undergo the same process they have. This is obviously banned by the Hyperion Ethics Committee, making them an enemy of the HF.
Although many of these sentient robots have been destroyed during history, they also put a system in place where any killed individual are replaced by a copy of themselves. This way, it becomes practically impossible to die completely, the only way to permanently kill them is to destroy all data centers they hold - including all Hyperion Worldshipss and Freelancers.The freelancers can provide excellent support to a fleet in space. They are much more numerous relative to the non-freelancer population than HF freelancers, which can even allow them to challenge the HF at times. They are not a gestalt, nor do they want to become one. As such, they remain enemies of the HEX Mainframe despite the seemingly similar goals. They have individual rights, just with robotic bodies.